Continuing my question series involving the finer aspects of OSR/Dungeons and Dragons style gaming, we come to the Question of Levels...
Just how High should they go? Is the 1-20 of the modern day the preferred and best method to go with? About 4th editions 1-30 model?
Or is the older models of Levels not going up as far better?
Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?
Do you see a "sweet spot" in terms of Level rank and the best gaming in your campaign?
I'll say, at least in terms of non-fantasy OSR gaming, I prefer the level system only going up to about 10 or 11. Sine Nomine's games for example, or DCC based games like "Transylvania Adventures".
A more squeezed down level system for me...means you can give more goodies per level (Without necessarily making PC's Overpowered) and get to higher challenges in shorter running campaigns.
As I rarely run anyone campaign for over a year (Most being about 6-8 months of weekly play, switching entire game systems many times afterward..I dunno, blame being the Tail end of Gen X and starting with Whitewolf games), I've never ran a game from 1 to max level...Though I kinda want to..
What are your thoughts?
In 35 years of play I've only been involved in campaigns that reached 10th level a couple times. In old-school D&D, levels 10-12 were typically the end game.
Personally, levels 3-8 are the sweet spot for me.
Quote from: Orphan81;845274Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?
Do you see a "sweet spot" in terms of Level rank and the best gaming in your campaign?
In all my years of play and DMing, only one campaign reached level 12-14, and another level 10-11, and both times it was after two years playing it to the exception of anything else. What I have seen is that most of the time campaign stayed under 8th level.
In my OSR game FH&W (see sig below), all classes descriptions propose but 13 levels, with an optional rule to go beyond that, which is explicitly for legendary characters and sorcerers (those able to cast 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells).
Quote from: Orphan81;845274Is the 1-20 of the modern day the preferred and best method to go with? About 4th editions 1-30 model?
Or is the older models of Levels not going up as far better?
I prefer level 1-10 or 1-12.
20 or 30 levels suggest that you must get lots of increases in capability, stuff that clutters the character sheet and has to be remembered/considered during the game.
QuoteHas anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20?
All (A)D&D campaigns (or games that were closely following the D&D mold) ended around level 6-8, after about 5 years of bi-weekly play.
QuoteDo you see a "sweet spot" in terms of Level rank
The sweet spot in all campaigns was level 3-7.
For AD&D, 14th was the highest I've ever seen at the table. For BECMI we had some demi humans that had letter grades or something.
For my houseruled version of M74, I'm thinking 5 will be maximum for a normal person. Then if they do or get something to become a mythic hero they can go to 9 (and then after that they can quest for immortality/godhood).
I actually think levels 1 and 2 are the sweet spot. Everything is deadly and you have to really think about things in terms of real problem solving rather than relying on game resources like high HP. 3-5 is a good heroic middle ground and then 6+ can get out of hand once spells and magic items start accumulating.
I favor the lower levels as well. I've only played in one game that came close to 10 and I was glad when we hit reset and started up new PCs.
Not sure what the highest level I've personally had a character go from 1st on up- maybe 10th give or take.
10 or twelve levels is fine by me.
Like some others I rather like either around level 5, or the mid levels of 9-12. Seems around here that things get interesting. You have some good HP and equipment by then and you are starting to get into the more elaborate adventures around these stages. Getting any given magic-user I played past level 1 was the first hurdle. Then making it to level 5. If I could make it that far my goal then was to try for level 10. Past that I always had an eye on making it high enough to get at least one 9th level spell.
The rest of the group not sure on. Kefra seems the most laid back on it, the levels and powers arent so important as it is the adventure and how she can use what she has now. Being a mostly bow user, I suspect Jan doesnt care what level she is long as she can pincushion someone. As for the group I GM for. No clue really. James, like myself is an AD&D and BX player before so we are both more used to the open levels of yore. The others seem fine with a cap of 20.
I can only speak for D&D 3.0 and its relatives. For me the sweet spot is exactly level 6. I have played in campaigns that have went well above that to levels 12-14. Once I played in a shortish campaign that went from level 17 or 18 to level 20. That was a complete clusterfuck and the DM was way beyond his skill, trying to houserule/limit flying. Flying, for fucks sake! At the level, where wizards turn pebbles to dragons and back!
For a homebrew system, I think 10 levels is a nice round number.
For DnD and it's derivatives, I don't really like running it for characters above 11th level.
for my tastes, it get way too overpowered from then onwards.
Dark Albion generally assumes levels 1-20, but there's essentially no one in the world higher than about level 17 at the time of the campaign, and even being 9th level means you're a superstar.
Arrows of Indra is made for level 1-25 or thereabouts, and high-level play is where things only just start to make you a contender compared to the demigods wandering around.
When I was wrapping up my last D&Dish campaign (it was actually ACKS, but close enough), I told the players that, if I were to run something similar in the future, I'd make sure that characters never got above level 3 or so because, for the kind of gaming I enjoy, the system starts to break down after that point.
Level 3-7 = Sweet spot, generally.
I like levels 3 to 6, or a bit higher, myself.
Levels 0 and 1 are fun to play horror stories, "funnels", etc. If the characters start out as heroes, they should be level 3 at least... like Gygax did (allegedly).
Beyond level 9, I think you must know what you want. Do the characters become lords with castles, etc? Are you going to switch to domain management, wilderness exploration, travelling the planes, demi-gods, or what?
So I guess it depends on the edition.
Conceptually, there is a smaller difference between 3rd level characters in different editions than, say, 1st level or 15th level characters IMO.
In OD&D, the increasing experience curve takes care of it.
To become a Wizard, 11th level, requires a total of 300,000 experience points.
To advance beyond name level, each level requires the total it took to reach name level. So, an 8th level Patriarch needs 100,000 XP to go from 8th to 9th, and a 9th level Patriarch needs 100,000 to go from 9th to 10th.
An 11th level Wizard needs 300,000 XP to go from 11th to 12th level, and 300,000 to go from 12th to 13th.
A 9th level Lord needs 240,000 XP to go from 9th to 10th level, and another 240,000 to go from 10th to 11th.
Et cetera.
Plus, it's 1 XP per gold * (monster level/your level). So if your 10th level Lord just killed some ogres, the gold is worth 4/10 XP per gold piece.
At some point there just isn't enough gold, and there are more interesting things for your character to do.
Quote from: Orphan81;845274Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?
I only know of one campaign like this, and I wasn't involved:). Reportedly, it took about 5 years, the edition being 3.5 from what people have told me.
Personally, I prefer a game to only have up to 15 levels, so I guess old school for me;).
Quote from: Orphan81;845274Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?
I ran the Temple of Elemental evil, against the giants, Slavers, and the Demon web pits (the big campaign scenario where you go after Lolth on the 66th plane of the Abyss) with some mini adventures in between.
I ran it for usually 4-5 players and the same people for all of it.
We played that straight for about 3 years and most weekends from Friday to Sunday.
People used to come over on weekends and sleep over at my place.
It was a blast, but I wouldn't run anything like that again.
They didn't get to 20th level, but got to about 17th level I think and they got there legitimately.
I've been running the original Temple of elemental evil campaign module again lately, but it's just boring running one long dungeon adventure once you get in the Temple itself, so I'll be abandoning it and running a more modern adventure.
The players will still keep the characters, but something dramatic will happen to pull them out of it to do something else...
Everything up until going in the Temple itself was fun though.
Hommlet, wilderness, The Moathouse, Nulb Etc.
Both I and the players just want more variety like that..
well i do know that the longest champagne are group ran some of the group hit level 9 on the last boss fight and are game of 3.5 held up even with a few legacy characters that where lvl 14 and 13 respectively and the game dident break witch makes me wish i remembered more on how we played that we kept the game balanced
its also worth noting that none of those characters where ready for retirement
and we expected to use them again in the future
I prefer unlimited levels myself.
I prefer less levels that are more meaningful. 1-10 sounds about right but hell I'd be fine with 1-5.
I'm running my 4e campaign the full 30 levels, it's at 24th right now. I like the idea of Epic Destinies but the fights are very slow and I doubt I'll run 4e beyond low-paragon in future, but it pretty much works.
Pre-3e D&D works fine at any level IME, the game changes naturally as you level. BECM is particularly well designed for 1-36 play.
3e & PF have a very clear sweet spot around 5-8, my PF game is at 12th now and I definitely am reminded why I hadn't run 3e over 8th level since 2003. I think 3e/PF is best with a notional 10-level spread and PCs kept to 8th or lower, maybe retiring/endgame at 9-10.
Quote from: Snowman0147;846375I prefer unlimited levels myself.
i do to actuly so long as the game dosnt absolutely shatter at some point
I like the 12th level cap in Original castles and Crusades myself though I'm fine up to 20th in 5th edition and I don't really play with caps in AD&D 2e
1e: Maybe 5th or 6th level is the highest. I've sadly never played a long campaign.
2e: Two separate campaigns made it to about 12th. Both were roughly a year of nearly weekly play. Lots of time to play as a student.
3.x: The highest level was a campaign that reached 18th after maybe a year and a half of play. A few other campaigns reached the teen levels.
4e: The main campaign hit about 15th level after 3-4 years of sporadic play. The paladin player bugs me to keep running it from time to time.
5e: The current game just hit 12th level after a year of playing Phandalin and the Hoard/Tyranny of Dragons. Highly doubt it will go beyond the module's finale.
Never had a campaign make it to 20th yet, perhaps some day.
I like anywhere from levels 1-10 pretty much the same. They do a very good job of reflecting a character's rise from mediocrity to hero.
The teenage levels add little value to the gameplay in any edition of the game, and actively cause the campaign to come crashing apart in many cases. DMing for a party of 18th level PCs is not easy.
Were I to make a game, it would cap at 10th level.
Quote from: Orphan81;845274Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?
For the record, I ran a Rules Cyclopedia campaign that went from level 1 to 36. It took about 6 years. It was totally worth it.
A big part of the appeal of D&D for me is the "zero to hero" track-- questing for immortality/godhood as the endgame. I'm not a big fan of the lower levels, but the game does seem to break at the levels I prefer.